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This fandom is downright EAGER to catch someone making a mistake so they can loudly cancel that person and get acclaim for it. Everyone makes mistakes, and a mod accidentally approving a problematic post is not worthy of the bullying and ostracization going on.
WOC are being doxxed and bullied out of fandom for a mistake that they quickly rectified, explained, and apologized for. What kind of social justice supporters don& #39;t allow for dialogue or progress?
Answer: the kind who treat social justice like a performance art. It isn& #39;t. For white women like me, it& #39;s a long unlearning of taught biases, a fuckload of listening, and a willingness to engage in tough conversations about our own behavior.
For WOC, it& #39;s an endless, painful battle to educate and advocate while various groups are doing them active harm. We& #39;re losing diverse voices in the fandom because people are so fucking eager to "cancel" anyone adjacent to a scandal.
True progress involves discourse. It is patient. It is humane. And white women who want to perform wokeness can do just as much damage to POC as outright racists.
There& #39;s a difference between calling your friends in in a way that might actually effect change and calling them out for internet likes.
I& #39;ve seen this happen multiple times in this fandom, and people who have apologized and taken steps to address the harm are given no grace. Instead, I see reminders to never forget, to never forgive. To watch for these people and bully them out if they ever try to come back.
I& #39;ve been afraid to speak up too much when controversies arise because I am inherently a coward who just wants to be happy about horny space wizards. But we have a problem in this fandom (many problems, but this is one of them).
I& #39;ve received messages from people who are angry I& #39;m following other writers on Twitter because of real or perceived drama. There& #39;s a reason "cop behavior" is being discussed, because that& #39;s literally policing other people& #39;s lives, friendships, or idle social media activity.
One time? I was confronted for following a person who expressed an opinion on a current event that was based on her country& #39;s history (an opinion many academic sources agreed with). Someone with a headline-level knowledge of the issue decided she was "anti-[fill in the blank]"
I& #39;m keeping it vague, but there are centuries of history and some very real and concerning political implications of the current event. But people are so eager to label others as "wrong" that now when I see her mentioned on Twitter, that accusation is associated with her forever.
No one wants to know the history. No one is following the politics. But this writer--a diverse voice in the fandom--is permanently on a "problematic" list for voicing her very valid perspective as someone from a country that was actually affected.
